What is the biggest failure you've ever experienced Veeky Forums, or the lowest point you've experienced in life so far?

Lowest point of my life was when I suffered a nervous breakdown that triggered a massive anxiety disorder and panic attack avalanche.

I started to feel dizzy and nauseated and a numb sensation on my hands and forehead, and ended up fainted during a class in University. From this point forward I started to feel very nervous whenever I realized that I was feeling nervous, what actually made me even more nervous: was like a domino effect. So, if I needed to go to a meeting and I thought “God, I must not feel scared or nervous or I would end up feeling those dreadful sensations again”, you could bet I would end up feeling the terror in the meeting and eventually leaving.

The worst thing: the anxiety disorder spread to my writing. Whenever I sat down to write I was attacked by the same symptoms, and in a few weeks I was suffering with performance anxiety and panic attacks while sited in my working table.

On the same time my mother found out that my girlfriend from 5 years was stealing money from the office (she worked with us in our family business). My family became mad with her, but I couldn’t leave her, since I still loved her and, if I simply left her alone, she would not have any company and not even a place to live (her family was humble and was living in other city at that time).

So I was unable to write and was dividing my time between my family and my girlfriend, a terrible situation that I lived for more than one year. I eventually helped my girlfriend to arrange her life and ended up breaking up with her only when I knew she would be ok. I still loved her and that was the most painful thing I ever had to do, but the person that I thought I knew was not the person I knew (she was stealing money for a while and using it to buy things she didn’t need – I couldn’t live with that).

After I break up (and, being now free but still not having strength to write) I started to go out a lot and fuck several hookers and night girls. I started to drink more even though I am very weak with alcohol. My life lacked the most meaningful ingredient when I was not writing. I started to focus more on the gym and in clothing and things that were superficial: my ambitions and desires that I generally exhausted in writing were now being all spend in this life that was not fulfilling, only an imitation of the mad life of rich characters. If you want to know how low was my life let me just tell you that I was inspiring myself in a character from a very bad TV show: Christian Troy, from Nip/Tuck. Yeah, it was that bad.

The change happened when I searched Amazon for books on anxiety and ended up buying one that was incredibly good, a book that saved my life. It was “Freedom From Fear”, by Howard Liebgold, and it helped me to know the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy treatment. I was seeing psychiatrists, but nothing that they said or the drugs they gave me was really helping me: it was this book that helped me cure myself from anxiety and restart my writing life.

But the fighting was very hard. In order to cure myself I needed to sit down to write and, when the terrible symptoms emerge (pain on the chest, a heavy load in the lungs and heart, a knot on my throat, a pricking in my forehead, face and hands, dizziness), just keep writing, keep moving forward in spite of the terrible sensations (which are the result of massive discharges of adrenaline in the brain). It took me many months to cure myself, and I had many setbacks after that, periods of weeks or months when the anxiety would creep back inside my organism.

Even to this day I still have bad days, and the fear of fear is still a reality, but I am functional now and writing every day. I am thinking on starting the gym again and swimming lessons, but not mostly only to feel better and to improve my health.

>Are there any novels which deal with this issue

literally like 90% of all novels ever

>got assfucked by neighbourhood pedo
>dropped out of school
>had a severe mental breakdown

7 years later and I'm on my way to becoming a doctor. You just gotta pick yourself up, OP. Jacking off to your own misery and thinking it makes you Veeky Forums won't do you any favours.

Last year, my ex-wife divorced me over something so laughable, it's unbelievable, and right afterwards I had to go to SERE school, which is a military training program to help you if you are ever detained by the enemy. They try to break you down mentally and physically, and it was difficult to deal with that and go through an unwanted divorce, tbqh. I felt very imasculated, and thought about killing myself all the time.

I read My War Gone by, I Miss it So during this time, which really helped me realize there are better ways to die rather then cuck myself through suicide.

Didn't mean to quote you, m8.

What happened afterwards?

Normieproblems

I've been fired twice. The 2nd time didn't affect me much, just pissed me off because it was via email. The first time it happened was a shitshow - I started having seizures more frequently(nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy) and fell into a really bad depression. I was unemployed for over 4 months.

I remember feeling ashamed, and getting knots in my stomach when being asked about my work history at job interviews. It was a demeaning process. but I feel I'm more tenacious because of it.

>literally the best thing happens to him
>it's his biggest failure
damn

With all those knots in your stomach maybe you can apply for a job as a sailor :-)

Good one, friend. Coincidentally I've always wanted to learn how to sail.

Is never leaving the house except for work and interacting with people as little as possible so as to avoid any embarrassment (which are inevitable for a goofy and inept person as I am) a low moment?

That sounds fucking awful, user. If you can survive that kind of mental training though then good on you. Hope you never have to see your ex wife again.

Is 4 months really that much?

I've been planning to quit my job in the next few days and take at least 2 months off work. I haven't missed a day of work through illness in three years and have worked long hours. But it's taken its toll and my parents are encouraging me to quit (I don't like the job) and take some time out.

Back in Middle School I didn't have many friends, I was a social shut in and was satisfied even if I didn't see anybody for months, I also felt disconnected with my peers and had a bully that consistently, well...bullied. Pair that with your parents getting divorced and general existential dread and and you've got yourself a pretty suicidal teenager. It's been years and despite being much better I still feel the effects of that phase lingering today.

Your situation is quite different than mine was. 4 months off is fine if you plan for it, and have all your finances in order. My dad gave me some good advice a while back, if you're making a life decision(Jobs, Housing, serious relationships) make sure can see your self living with it for at least a few years.

I have my finances in order, and it's not as if I'll be paying rent. But I am worried I won't find another job considering this one was so hard to come by three years ago. I am not at all an employable individual. I tried joining a convent recently but got outed as an autist by the monks.

If that's how you interpret it, then yes, you are correct.

During my masters degree I suffered from depression. Eventually I had a nervous breakdown complete with psychotic symptoms.

I'm alright now but it took years of therapy and soul-searching to fix.

a few hours ago i threw a glass at the floor, then laid down in the bathtub and pissed all over myself because i'm a sack of shit and deserved it. i'm re-writing chapter by chapter my book and even the one's i thought were decent are pathetic and beginning every chapter anew is exhausting.2/3 through and i want to die. drunk now and avoiding to look at it

That's kinda hot.

>people not like me are lying
kek

Lowest point in my life? I went through a period of insomnia so bad that I would regularly operate on less than two hours of sleep a night (averaged of course, many nights I never slept). If that had continued, I probably would have killed myself.

Try Under the Volcano

I've got my shit together but there was a period when both me and my wife lost our jobs at the same time, then got home on Boxing Day to find that the cold water tank in our house had burst and fucked everything. Luckily we were insured for all of these eventualities but living in a fucked up house for eight months while the insurer finally got their shit together, while unemployed, was beyond depressing. Not only that, but I was unemployed for eighteen months in total. By the end I was borderline suicidal.

I smoked a lot of pot when I was a teenager, once I got a really bad trip that triggered a crippling anxiety and hypochondria that followed me for a few years. I managed to win hypochondria by forcing myself to do all the things I was scared of, but boi was it hard, and I wasted a couple of years of my life that I could have lived fully.

>me and my wife

Empathy ceased at this point desu

i've got my shit together and have been feeling pretty good recently but everyone tends to ignore me for the most part anyway

user, it's not about how together your shit is. It's about your standards for shit being together.
Jesus fucking Christ user that sounds bad.

>Empathy ceased at this point
>Being so bitter about somebody having a wife that he WONT empathize with somebody because of it.

thanks for acknowledging my existence

Heroin addiction.

Pretty shitty, but kicked it 5 months ago today.

falling for the Gene Wolfe is a good writer meme

>tfw have had 3 gf's and still struggle with this

cybering with everyone when i was 13 didn't turn out so well as i got older and i snapped with all my obsessive thinking where i'd literally ponder over the same thoughts for years, and still do.

>What is the biggest failure you've ever experienced Veeky Forums

Camus' oeuvre.

>the lowest point you've experienced in life so far?

Reading Camus.

Were you tired all the time and sleepy while not being able to fall asleep or could you operate pretty normally most of the time?

You're apathetic most of the time. You're always tired but unable to sleep. You fluctuate between misery and delirium. Most of the time you just try to distract yourself. Sometimes you realize your eyes are open in the middle of the night. Everything is infuriating.

It's the worst.

Experiencing it now. Almost Bedridden for 3 months, on antidepressants, in a foreign country, no friends, dropped out of education, not sure who I am and what I want. Complete ruin. Filled with regret and self hate. Today I felt dissapointed after waking up. I have created myself a nightmare and don't see a way out other than going back home to the dark void of nonexistence

Shit man. But how did you end up like that? Expat, working abroad and ending up with depression or u were traveling and have had a breakdown?

I don't have any friends.
The worst part is that I had friends.